Bloody Hell, Mary!
by fallen monkey
Summary: An urban-fantasy retelling of the Bloody Mary legend, "Bloody Hell, Mary!" explores two outcomes of a single turning point, when a chance encounter with her ex-boyfriend tests whether Mary has learned from history or is doomed to repeat it. No matter which course she follows, she has to face the other in the mirror.


REFLECTION

Mouth gaping as she stares into the mirror, Mary applies her mascara. Daytime makeup, so only one coat is necessary. Easy-breezy, just like heather-grey tee slouching above her skinny jeans. It's only coffee, after all. She can't let it look like any more than it is. She won't.

Butterflies betray her conviction from the inside. Their flittering wings scrape the inside of her gut until memory coats them in bile, and they are subdued again. _It's coffee_, she reaffirms. _Nothing more_.

Mary plonks her mascara back into her makeup case and fingers out the tube of concealer. Passing on a second glass of wine last night was one of her better decisions—for so many reasons, but among them that she feels rested and hydrated today, so why the dark circles beneath the brown eyes staring back at her? Grudgingly, she smears the concealer stick in half-moons and blends it with the pads of her ring fingers. She can do that much for Jack, she figures, knowing well enough it's foolish vanity she's appeasing in the end. Wouldn't be the first time. So maybe she should go with the lip-gloss, too.

Dabbing some sticky shimmer to her lower lip, Mary blots it on a square of toilet paper and runs her other hand through her hair, mussing it a little, just enough to look effortless. She's pleased in spite of herself.

Clicking off the light, she leaves the bathroom and ultimately her apartment.

xxxxx

Clicking on the bathroom light, Mary proceeds to pee, wipe, wash her hands. She is pissed, and she glares at her reflection as she scrubs her palms vigorously under the faucet.

_I dare you to smile, Mary_, she says to herself. And the eyes that blink back at her seem to, even if the mouth doesn't. There's a glimmer to her gold-brown irises and a fresh flush to her pale skin, so her frown looks out of place. She shakes it off, takes a deep breath, and pulls her shoulders back.

With a half-smile, she snorts. _Okay, getting stood up isn't the worst thing that could have happened. It was only coffee anyway_.

Three hours after she first left for the day, she's back home from her solo afternoon. She's sure the barristas were taking pity on her when they sliced up those free samples of their fudge nut brownies while she sat there by herself. Not that she'd never hung out alone at a café before, but this was probably the first time she arrived somewhere so sweaty and out of breath, twenty minutes late despite running from the bus stop. She paused two steps inside the door to scan all the tables before walking a lap and sitting at an available one, her knee bobbing up and down as her fingers tapped the table surface.

A tall, skinny guy walked out of the single-seater restroom. Too tall, too skinny, though—not Jack. So he really wasn't there. He must have been running late, too.

After ten minutes, she got up to order a bottle of water and espresso so she didn't look like a loiterer. Not that she cared what people thought of her. Really, she was thirsty more than anything and needed her caffeine fix. Plus, when Jack finally showed up, it would be clear she didn't wait for anyone. And from the diminutive size of her cup, she didn't intend to stay long.

_If_ he showed up. As it was, he didn't. She'd gotten the picture well before the second hour had passed, yet lingered for another coffee—large, filter, black—with an egg salad sandwich and magazine.

Rinsing the soap off her hands at the bathroom sink, Mary questions if Jack's pissed, too. She knows she should have stayed her course and taken the subway to meet him. Street traffic was already clogged by late afternoon, so she should've known not to veer off to the bus stop instead. But she did and she can't change her mind now. And maybe, just maybe her subconscious wanted to run late on purpose, hoping she wouldn't have to see him. Regardless, she'd given him two hours, but he couldn't give her twenty minutes.

_Asshole_. If she still had his phone number (thank God she'd never committed it to memory), she would text him as much. But she gave that the kiss-off long ago, along with her own digits. New life, new cell phone and provider. With an unlisted number. She needed a new phone anyway after the old one had smashed on his windshield.

She supposes that not withholding her new number from him when they'd first made the date—no, not a date, just coffee—could've helped avoid this mix-up, if that's what it was. But what if it wasn't? What if he really did just blow her off for the umpteenth time? And was she insane? Giving him that number would have entirely defeated the purpose. It would have defeated her.

So everything has probably worked out for the best. Still, she looks back at the mirror and wishes she could wipe that smile off her eyes.

xxxxx

A week passes, and out of sight has proven out of mind as Mary applies her second coat of mascara with hardly any thought of Jack. She knows by now that the effort he isn't worth is better directed at herself. The yoga class she started as distraction from her own thoughts has actually made her more in tune with them, surprising her to find that confronting her demons was the best way to exorcise them. She's starting to feel relaxed and good in mind and body, inspiring her to try out a tight little black dress tonight. This Girl's Night has been on the calendar for ages, and it's worth a sparkle or two in her eye.

Yet when she assesses her reflection after that last sweep of her lashes, Mary steps back and pinches her brow. Her eyes look glassy, not glimmering, their whites a little grey and matted with red veins. And she used only a hint of liner and no mascara on her lower lids, yet inky black is smudged beneath them, like when she cries or sneezes while her upper lashes are still wet. She loathes when that happens, not enjoying having to spend any more time on primping and priming than she has to, but she knows she's hardly blinked.

Mary reaches for a tissue and wipes the black from under her eyes, but it doesn't go away. Muttering curses under her breath as she glances at her wristwatch, she reluctantly pulls lotion and cotton pads from the cabinet and tries to remove the smudges that remain thoroughly stained in her skin. Her eyes look watery, probably irritated from the cream, so her last resort is applying more makeup to pretend she was going for a smoky eye. After that, she goes straight for the concealer—she's been sleeping enough, but those circles ringing her eyes are still looking so dark these days.

Mary brushes some ivory powder above her cheekbones, foofs her curled and lightly sprayed hair as she presses her lips to even out their gloss, then shuts off the light behind her.

xxxxx

Treading down the dark hallway in her PJs, Mary giggles. She's still buzzing from a few cocktails, and every memory of Girl's Night strikes her as hilarious at the moment.

She flicks on the bathroom light and scurries to the toilet to relieve her bursting bladder. Sitting there, she leans forward and plops her chin into her hands as her elbows rest on her knees. She thinks of how her friends saw Jack's "much cuter" doppelgänger leave the restaurant right before she arrived and wonders if it was actually him. If so, Mary inwardly high-fives fate for not crossing their paths again.

Naturally, she told her friends about the bullet she'd dodged at the coffee shop, and their frozen silence eventually melted into thank-Gods and good-riddances.

"He's bad for you, Mary," one of them sternly warned.

"You shouldn't have agreed to meet him in the first place," said another.

"You're not yourself when you're with him," said a third. Then they oohed and aahed over her new smoky-eye look.

Sitting here on the toilet, Mary chuckles and rubs her face in her palms. Her fingertips slide from her forehead to her cheeks as she lifts her face to look into the bottom corner of her large vanity mirror. The friction on her skin pulls down her lower eyelids to expose the bottoms of her eyeballs and glossy pink slivers of flesh underneath. The effect is ghoulish.

She huffs a self-deprecating laugh at her disturbing visage, then wipes and flushes so she can finally head to bed. It was a fun night but a long one in the end. Thanks to having to fix her makeup earlier, she'd arrived at the restaurant late, so she stayed late to compensate. Then when her subway line shut down for the evening, she spent ages trying to hail a taxi and ended up taking the night bus home instead. She'd almost caught that last train, too—the cuff of her coat sleeve caught in the subway doors when she'd reached to keep them from closing. All she accomplished was a sooty sleeve and wounded pride as drunken passengers watched her with amusement or apathy from inside the train car.

Mary can laugh about it now, though, from the warm comforts of home, and she does as she goes to wash her hands. She shakes them out before turning off the faucet, looking up, and—

She gasps. Rubbing her face a minute ago really did a number on her makeup, she thinks, because her eyes are blackened, and her crimson lipstick has smeared up to her nose. Mary looks a bloody mess, like an evil clown, and she giggles again at the ridiculous sight while she fetches cotton and cleanser from the cabinet.

xxxxx

A month later, Mary returns home from the gym. It's the Friday afternoon of a three-day weekend, and she's making it one of indulgence. Once she showers and dresses, she's off again for a facial appointment, and after that, she's consulting someone at the department store cosmetics counter to learn what foundation and powders are best for her skin tone and type. And on her way home from there, she thinks she'll pop into a nutrition store for some vitamins or herbal supplements that could improve her complexion from the inside out.

Because the fact is, Mary hasn't been looking so well lately. She's not normally this fixated on appearance, but she's been eating healthy and taken up running again, jogging to and from work at least three days a week and taking yoga class twice. She feels at the peak of her physical fitness, and it's helped her focus better at work and manage stress. And the only times Jack ever enters her mind are with a subsequent inner sigh of relief that she's never run into him again. For the first time in four months, she believes she's fully and truly over the bad business their year-long relationship had been.

So why her face should appear ever more sallow, sometimes sunken, sometimes puffy—almost bruised—simply escapes her. Whether capillaries are bursting or she suffers a deficiency, Mary has also made a doctor's appointment for first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully that will shed some light or at least provide a dermatologist referral.

In the meantime, her friends shake their heads with bemused expressions whenever she complains, fervently praising her beauty and gushing that she looks the best she ever has. Then they ask if this has anything to do with impressing Jack, if Mary's been seeing him in secrecy, which Mary denies over and over again. So she's simply stopped talking about her superficial concerns to avoid interrogation and sounding insecure as if she's fishing for compliments.

In keeping it to herself, she just hopes today's remedies will work.

xxxxx

The next day, Mary trudges into the bathroom without bothering to turn the light on. She fishes in her cabinet for Visine and applies a couple of drops to each eye to soothe the sting of her tears.

Today's doctor's appointment has turned up nothing. She's still waiting on blood test results, but her physician otherwise insisted during the examination that none of her alleged symptoms were visible. But with a shrug, he indulged her claims with some benign conjectures and recommendations, which gives some solace but not enough to quell Mary's paranoia. She thinks about seeking a second opinion.

Eyelids closed, she looks up, down, side to side, rolling her eyes around in the saline solution and breathing deep, slow breaths as she prays she's only imagining things. That the doctor is right and she'll open her eyes to the healthy vision he saw. With hands splayed on the countertop on either side of the sink, she hangs her head for a while. Her nose itches, so she brings her face to her left arm and scratches it against her inner elbow. The Band-Aid there from her blood sample scrapes her cheeks.

_Please, Mary. Please, Mary. Please, Mary_…

She raises her face to look at the mirror in the dark. Her reflection stands hunched over the sink, too, in silhouette. There's enough light from the hallway, though, for Mary to see the ends of her hair look stringy, almost wet in the way the strands congeal together. She swears she even sees a couple of beads of inky liquid drip from them to the sink, so she looks down at her actual tendrils where they hang past her shoulders. Of course, it's difficult to discern in the dimness, but they appear smooth and brushed, not like she got caught in the rain.

Mary looks back up at her face and jolts a bit at the weird tricks of light and shadow playing upon it. Beneath where her hair parts at the scalp is what appears like a protrusion on her forehead, but when she lifts a hand to her head, she doesn't feel a lump there, not so much as a zit. The rest of her face, though, is dark, so dark. She can't make out her nose or mouth, and her eye cavities yawn open like bottomless hollows. The bones at her brow and cheeks must cast deep shadows to produce such an effect, and a chill tickles down Mary's spine for a just a moment before she decides to turn on the light and assess her features properly.

Stepping toward the bathroom door, Mary reaches for the switch. Before she presses it, though, she draws a long breath and reminds herself that what the doctor said was _good_ news, that she doesn't _want_ something to be wrong.

She couldn't possibly feel more otherwise, after all, and she almost has her mystery malady to thank for it. She's made the lifestyle changes she needed to since the breakup, and as long as she's improving on the inside—mentally, emotionally, and physically—she shouldn't care how she appears on the outside. Life has been good, really good, and she's the only one around her who hasn't seemed to realize that. No one else has viewed her as a freak, only her—a souvenir from the Jack days, it seems, back when he looked at her like some portrait of Dorian Gray, seeing ugliness and weakness where she couldn't and hadn't before but started to under the crushing power of his suggestion. Her friends are right, of course; Jack was awful for her, awful _to_ her, and these months without him have given her the pleasure of meeting herself again. And what she sees in herself is pretty great.

Spreading her lips into a broad grin, Mary exhales and flips on the light. She turns her head to smile at her reflection—and freezes for a few sickly seconds before her rigor mortis thaws into what would be a blood-curdling scream if she could only find her voice.

Clutching at her face and chest, she falls to her knees at the toilet and vomits.

REFRACTION

Mouth gaping as she stares into the mirror, Mary applies her mascara. Daytime makeup, so only one coat is necessary. Easy-breezy, just like heather-grey tee slouching above her skinny jeans. It's only coffee, after all. She can't let it look like any more than it is. She won't.

Mary plonks her mascara back into her makeup case and fingers out the tube of concealer. Accepting that second glass of wine last night was not one of her better decisions—for so many reasons, but among them that she now has these dark circles under her eyes. Grudgingly, she smears the concealer stick in half-moons and blends it with the pads of her ring fingers. She can do that much for Jack, she figures; when they ran into each other at the bar last night, he commented even then that she looked tired.

But she apparently looked good enough for him to buy her that drink. She'd only intended to have the one after-work glass of wine with colleagues before going home to catch up on reading and laundry. Otherwise, it's difficult for her to stop after two, and isn't it just like the old days with Jack when she doesn't…

But old habits die hard, and in a moment of weakness she gave Jack benefit of the doubt. No, she won't call herself weak—caught off-guard sounds much better. Stumbling into the person you've grown used to avoiding will do that. It even took her a couple of seconds to recognize him; he looks better than when she moved out of his apartment three months ago. He's gotten some sun and appears to have lost some of his beer bloat. More significantly, he greeted her so amiably—not what she'd expected after leaving him with that cracked windshield. As a couple, no doubt they brought out the worst in each other, but maybe as acquaintances, they could find the closure Mary has been seeking. There's no harm in them just talking…a little. But nothing more than that. She needs today to make that clear.

Because Mary worries, you see, that she led him on last night. As she could have predicted, she over-imbibed, but she assumed it was just a one-off encounter and wanted to make it as comfortable and amicable as possible. And in enjoying what had once been so good about them—Jack really could be so funny—perhaps she even let her inebriated self get a little flirty with him. Blame it on the wine.

What she hadn't anticipated, however, was that he'd ask what she was doing today. Everything sounded like a great idea by their third round, so she agreed to coffee near his office. And today she hopes the arm's-length sobriety of sunshine and caffeine will set Jack straight on where things are _not_ going between them.

Dabbing some sticky shimmer to her lower lip, Mary blots it on a square of toilet paper and runs her other hand through her hair, mussing it a little, just enough to look effortless. She's pleased in spite of herself.

Clicking off the light, she leaves the bathroom and ultimately her apartment.

xxxxx

Clicking on the bathroom light, Mary proceeds to pee, wipe, wash her hands. She is confused but almost unnervingly excited, and she glances at her reflection as she scrubs her palms vigorously under the faucet.

_I dare you to deny it, Mary_, she says to herself. And the sharp eyes that blink back at her do seem to snub the idea there'd been any connection with Jack at the coffee shop. She knows she should believe them, too. If only Jack hadn't been so punctual, so courteous, so humorous all afternoon. She could have sat there for hours, genuinely enjoying his company and handsome golden looks made more rugged by a closely trimmed beard.

_People don't change as easily on the inside_, her reflection seems to warn her, its countenance looking angry more than anything, and Mary frowns, considering how funny body language can be sometimes, when doubt can tug desire into a twisted, almost spiteful submission. She shakes it off, takes a deep breath, and pulls her shoulders back.

With a half-smile, she snorts. _Okay, okay. I know. Tread lightly with this one. It was only coffee anyway_.

Three hours ago, she'd been debating whether to take the bus or subway when the bumper-to-bumper traffic finally swayed her toward the train. She arrived at the café ten minutes early, cool, collected, and placing bets with herself that Jack would be late, as usual. But not two minutes afterward, there he was—he paused just two steps inside the door to scan all the tables before approaching the one where she sat. She hadn't ordered yet, so he went to the counter on both of their behalves, insisting on treating her. He remembered how she takes her coffee black, and even came back with a fudge nut brownie for her—an impetuous gesture like during their first weeks dating, not the months to follow when he made her swap calories for self-control.

Rinsing the soap off her hands at the bathroom sink, Mary questions again if Jack enjoyed her company, too. She knows they didn't have much time—he was called back into his dental office for an emergency twenty minutes later, so it worked out well that they'd both been early to have a few more minutes' time together. Had she been at all late, she might have missed him altogether.

But there was no sense in analyzing the what-ifs; it was enough to see that last night hadn't been a fluke. Today, they got on really well, and she knows it's ridiculous, but the abrupt end to their coffee date—no, not a date, just coffee—left her wanting more…

_Asshole_. Thanks to her less-than-best efforts, she's let him in again, even if only into her thoughts. That's the only kink her armor needs to undo three months of fortification. And his sudden departure from the café had thrown her off again, by just enough, to hurriedly exchange numbers. Now he had her new, unlisted phone number.

_Time to disconnect another one_…but maybe not until she gives him a fair chance to phone her. Just once. To see if he will at all. Even people under arrest have the right to one phone call, right?

So everything has probably worked out for the best. Still, she looks back at the mirror and wishes she could see a smile in her eyes, not the distrust that dulls them.

xxxxx

A week passes, and out of sight has not proven out of mind as Mary can't even apply her second coat of mascara without thinking about Jack. Thank goodness it's Girl's Night tonight.

She feels bloated so is wearing an oversized black tunic over black leggings and is experimenting with a smoky eye. She hopes it will camouflage what her concealer doesn't seem up to the job for—she hasn't been sleeping enough, her dreams invaded by shit men who don't call when they promise to, and those circles ringing her eyes are still looking so dark these days. The heavy eye makeup is bolder than she's ever attempted, normally opting for a more God-given, take-me-as-I-am look, but it makes for a fun distraction. Besides, if she botches it up, she knows her gals won't judge. And if she does it just right, she wonders what Jack would think of the change…

There she goes again. She knows he isn't worth the mental energy and could kick herself in the ass for giving an ounce of it. Between her work, friends, and piles of books beckoning her from the shelves, life has managed to fill in the blanks he left behind, and the last thing she wants is for the other week's drinks and coffee to perforate it with spaces again. She knows from last time how Jack can overtake that space, filling and expanding beyond it to rip her life. And she knows it's in those spaces that the demons like to hide.

There's not room enough behind her eyes for those demons and her tears. One by one, the little fiends poke the teardrops with their pitchforks, bursting them so the water drains down Mary's face as she slumps toward the sink. Pressing both lips and lids together, she lets her face crumple, and her lungs hyperventilate for a few solid shakes.

_Damn you, Mary. You're stronger than this. Pull it together_.

She claws the countertop and deeply inhales, inflating her torso to stand up straight and assess the damage of her slaughtered smoky eye. Opening her lids, she braces for the hideous black-widow spider streaks. In fact, before she even looks, Mary reaches for a tissue to wipe the black from under her eyes.

But when she faces the mirror again, what she sees instead is…striking, actually, if that's not too conceited for her to admit to herself. Her eyes are glimmering, not glassy, their whites white and not matted with red veins. The inky black of her mascara and liner is almost perfectly intact; her upper lids are artfully shadowed, and what she applied to her lower ones has diminished but not smudged.

Glancing at her wristwatch, she heaves a sigh of relief that now she won't be late. As her finishing touches, Mary brushes some ivory powder above her cheekbones, foofs her curled and lightly sprayed hair as she presses her lips to even out their gloss, then shuts off the light behind her.

xxxxx

Treading down the dark hallway in her PJs, Mary groans. She's wasted from too many cocktails, and all she wants to do is pull the trigger at the toilet so she can evacuate the devil liquid from her body and return to her bed to pass out.

"Never could handle your liquor," Jack calls from the kitchen. Mary can hear her cabinets opening and slamming shut, glasses clinking, and she knows he's going to be disappointed when he finds there are no snacks or alcohol in the apartment. "You've got beet juice but no beer? Senior citizen isn't sexy on you, Mary."

And there it is. But she can't bother with him now, not until the bathroom stops spinning and she can walk her way back down the hall. She's crumpled on the floor, in the dark, and as she spits the remaining moisture from her mouth, a shadow falls over the shaft of light beaming in from the hall.

"I'm just yanking your chain," Jack says from the bathroom doorway. "You all right? C'mon. Let's go to bed." He reaches out to her, and she rises from the tile to take his hand and let him lead her to the bedroom.

Blinking through a cottony haze, Mary can't quite process her reality. What was supposed to be a carefree night out with the gals began with three of her closest friends making a beeline for her as soon as she'd walked in the restaurant door.

Guiding Mary by the arm to the ladies' room, "We think Jack's here," one of them said. "Did you know this?"

"Do you want to leave? We can leave," said another.

Dumbstruck, Mary just shook her head to both questions and inwardly gave fate the middle finger for crossing their paths like this. Jack could've been on a date for all she knew, and her friends looked ready to lynch him.

"Probably stalking you," said the first, rolling her eyes before she narrowed them. "Are you okay? Have you been crying?"

"I'm fine." Mary must have been kidding herself earlier that her makeup looked okay, a trick of her bathroom's bad lighting.

"But your mascara—"

"I'm _fine_," she snapped, but not sooner than one of the young women had a wet paper towel ready to bring to her face. Huffing, Mary said thanks and allowed her friends to play beauty parlor since she obviously didn't trust her own judgment anymore.

Eyes widened and rolled up to the ceiling as the coarse paper chaffed beneath her lower lashes, Mary reiterated to them it was nothing and that she didn't want to talk about it. Could they just have the fun they came for—no boys allowed. The rest of her face was touched up in silence. Once finished, they wasted no time relocating her to a bar around the corner.

A couple of drinks later, Mary's phone went off. The number looked familiar but wasn't labeled as one of her contacts.

"Hello?"

"Where are you? I thought I saw you before."

Him.

"Out with the girls."

"Can I meet you somewhere later?"

He could. Mary had just firmed up the details and hung up when she heard, "He's bad for you, Mary."

"You shouldn't have agreed to meet him," said another friend.

"You're not yourself when you're with him," said a third.

She played dumb and lied that it was someone else, a cute coworker who'd been flirting with her lately. They didn't seem to buy it but kept their peace for the remainder of their time together.

By ten, Mary made her excuses to leave. She met Jack at his favorite club, and a few stiff drinks and drunken PDAs on the dance floor later, here they are. At her apartment, an address Jack now knows. Hand in hand, heading to her bed. He practically took her in the cab on their way home, right there in the backseat—until it came time to let her pay the fare.

Mary thinks she has to puke again. She pauses just inside her bedroom doorway, a hesitation she knows he won't honor, not this far into it, not in this state.

With slow steps, Jack rotates and backtracks toward her, backing her out of the doorway and against the hallway wall opposite. Still holding her one hand, he seizes the other and brings both above her head, pinning them there as he presses his mouth against Mary's. He smears his lips all around hers and tries to penetrate them. But Mary can still taste bitter-sour stomach acid on her tongue, so when it reluctantly meets his, Jack snaps his head back.

He lets go of her to wipe his mouth. "Brush your teeth first." Licking at his lips, he looks down at his fingertips, pinches his brow, and then wipes off his mouth again before gliding his forearm under his nose as though for good measure. "Some things don't change, I see," he mutters under his breath as he pivots to disappear into the bedroom.

Hands back down at her sides, Mary clenches them into fists. She feels her nose running and wipes it with her knuckles. Then she returns to the bathroom to do as she was told—only because she knows if she waits long enough, Jack will be snoring once his head hits the pillow.

Biding her time, she sits on the toilet and rigorously rubs her face into her palms, not caring if it blackens her eyes again with mascara. Her hands slide from her forehead to her cheeks as she lifts her face to look into the bottom corner of her large vanity mirror, but before she focuses on her reflection, she jolts at the blood on her palms.

Drinking always did dry her out and bring on nosebleeds, and Jack mashing his face against hers a moment ago probably didn't help. He knows she's prone to that, too, and he must've seen it just now but didn't say anything. _Jerk_. Mary yanks off some toilet paper to plug the offending nostril. With her head tipped back until the bleeding stops, she stands to brush her teeth. She feels around on the countertop for her toothbrush and toothpaste and brings the two together up in the air where she can see what she's doing. Setting the toothpaste down, she plucks the tissue out of her nose before lowering her head and—

She squints at the mirror. Rubbing her face earlier did hardly anything to her makeup, and there's not so much as a speck of red beneath her nose when she'd expected to look like a bloodied clown. What she does see is a merry twinkle in her eyes, and Mary wonders if there's something inside her that hasn't given up yet. She'd almost laugh if she didn't want to cry, and she prays for peaceful sleep after she slips into bed beside a snoring Jack.

xxxxx

A month later, Mary returns home from Jack's. It's the Friday afternoon of a three-day weekend, and she wants a fresh change of clothes for tonight. Naturally, Jack's first nights crashing at her place were just a novelty, and soon enough, he played the but-my-place-is-closer-to-everywhere card that got her Walk of Shaming all over again.

Once she showers and dresses, she's off again to his place, picking up fresh food and flowers along the way. Jack had to head into work for a few hours, so while he's away, Mary has plans to tidy his apartment and prepare a healthy dinner for his return. She wants everything to be as nice and friendly as when they'd first reunited so she can let him down easy.

Because the fact is, Mary hasn't been doing so well lately. She's not normally this distracted at work or dishonest with friends, and she realizes she's slipped into the bad habits of her past. Before Jack re-entered her life, she'd gotten so close to feeling fully and truly over the bad business of their previous relationship. The mood swings, the lies, the low self-esteem—none of that had plagued her anymore, and while she thought she realized it the first time around, now she sees the capital-T truth with undeniable, chastening clarity: it's not her, it's him. But she's let it be him.

Oh, and it's been him, again and again and again. Keeping her holed up inside even on the most gorgeous of weekends, first to screw around in bed all day, and now to watch TV and subsist on takeout. Talking her out of plans with her friends by giving her gifts or guilt trips. Wearing her down with his sweetness and neediness and sexiness and explosiveness.

Because the explosions happen, just as they did before. The silly fights he instigates in the heat of the drunken moment, the ones that escalate for no good reason and are instantly regretted in the morning. He'll grab at her wrists and shake her or seize her mouth to keep it shut when she yells back. For the last week, her jaw has been clicking, and Mary swears it's from their last late-night bout. That or the make-up sex they had afterward; in the throws of possessive passion, Jack has taken to sucking and biting at her body to the point of pain, and her cheeks and mouth have been no exception. She knows where this will lead because she's seen the signs before.

So why her face should appear ever more clear, sometimes rosy, always glowing—and never bruised—simply escapes her. The confident-looking, fresh-faced woman who looks back at her every day in the mirror is the person she wants to be on the inside, too. She knows she can be that Mary if she doesn't give up on her.

In the meantime, her friends—when they do see her—shake their heads with bemused expressions over what in the hell she got herself back into. They say they want to be there for her, but she makes it difficult when she's repeatedly a fool for this guy. So Mary has simply stopped talking about it to avoid interrogation and wait until she sorts it out on her own.

In keeping it to herself, she just hopes tonight's remedy will work.

xxxxx

The next day, Mary trudges into her bathroom without bothering to turn the light on. She wets a washcloth under cold water, then brings it to her face to soothe her stinging eye.

Yesterday's dinner didn't go quite as she'd hoped. What did go to plan was a spotless apartment infused with the warmth and spice of a slow-cooked vegetable tagine on the stove. A kitchen table topped with linen, a vase of lilies, and a chilled bottle of prosecco. Mary was very careful to buy just the one bottle, enough to fortify her nerves and relax Jack's. But nothing more. Jack doesn't much care for sparkling wine anyway, so what he did drink would be choked down reluctantly. She had hoped it would encourage him to favor the water she also set out on the table, iced and enticing in a clear glass pitcher with lime slices floating on top.

Eyelids closed, Mary breathes deep, slow breaths as she prays she's only imagined what just happened. That what transpired last night is where it really ended, not this nightmarish carryover into today. With one hand splayed on the countertop while the other presses the cloth to her eye, she hangs her head over the sink for a while.

Last night when Jack returned home from work, he found Mary smiling if a little anxious. He inhaled and complimented the aroma in the air before saying it was about time she did some cooking. When he asked what was in the dish, he grimaced first at her answer and then at the prosecco on the table.

"No meat? What, are you Gwyneth Paltrow now? Is this more New Age shit to go with that yoga class you keeping saying you're gonna to take?" He'd said it jokingly yet infused the air with a familiar tang that bit at the back of Mary's tongue.

She held her smile. "It's good for us. Now just have a seat and unwind from your day."

It was all very Suzie Homemaker while she served up their food and sat to enjoy their meal. Until she didn't. Jack was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid, and they'd barely moved on from their salads to the tagine when he asked her point-blank what all the fuss was for. When she answered honestly, he merely sat back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a napkin. Then, with a solemn expression and his eyes trained on the table, he said in a low voice, "Please leave." Mary spoke up to offer apology and explanation, but he cut her off with "It's done. Just go." And so she did.

Mary raises her face to look at her bathroom mirror in the dark. Her reflection stands hunched over the sink, too, in silhouette. There's enough light from the hallway, though, for her to see her hair looks unfathomably dry, smooth and brushed, not wet and stringy, which she _knows_ it is from what just happened. She can feel it, right now, with her fingers.

_Please, Mary. Please, Mary. Please, Mary...pull yourself together._

She looks back up at her face and inspects the way light and shadow play upon it. She sets the washcloth down and brings her hand back up to gently rub the lump on her forehead that she feels is there even if she can't see it. The only time Jack had hit her before was over four months ago, right before she'd stormed out of his apartment with a suitcase and flung her cell phone at his car parked out on the street. He'd delivered a slap that felt like a hot frying pan, but this time…this time she understood that expression about seeing stars.

When she left his place for the final time last night, she'd expected a delayed reaction would eventually bring him back with all guns blazing; he was never one to go down without a good verbal sparring. And when he buzzed up to her apartment late this morning, the tightness in his voice over the intercom confirmed that. What she couldn't sense until she'd let him into her home, though, were the fumes of stale liquor rising off his breath with every word he could muster. An all-night bender to follow that prosecco, Mary assumed, judging by the same clothes he'd worn at dinner.

His speech was slurred but started out sedate. He was lost without her before, and he couldn't lose her again. He refused.

Talking became pleading, then pleading became crying, and crying became yelling, and when yelling turned to screaming, Mary's cries rang out against the beat of a neighbor pounding against her door.

Whoever had run to her rescue couldn't bust through before she had already taken a couple of solid blows. But she didn't beg for mercy. Mary was too weak to fight Jack back in body, but she found strength in mind, and she let him back her into a corner in the kitchen—right into the nook of her L-shaped countertop where her coffee had finished brewing. With one arm protecting her battered face, Mary reached back with the other. She seized the handle of her coffee pot and splashed the hot black liquid in Jack's face. On her next swing, she crashed the pot down on his skull.

Coffee and glass rained on her, too, but, numb to it, she just watched as Jack groaned and backed off, right into the grip of the guy next door who'd managed to break open the door.

Said next-door neighbor is still sitting on Jack now, in fact, right where he pinned him to the coffee-stained carpet—finishing the job Mary started. They wait in silence for the police to arrive while Mary cleans up in the bathroom.

Stepping away from the sink, Mary reaches for the bathroom switch to finally turn on the light. Before she presses it, though, she draws a long breath and reminds herself that what just occurred was a _good_ result compared to what could have gone horribly wrong.

But it didn't, and she has her mystery mirror to thank for it. She's made the change she needed to, if a little late, but better late than never. And as long as she improves on the inside, she'll one day feel as good as she's looking on the outside. Life has the chance to be good, really good, and it took her own reflection to help her realize that. All those warning gazes and glimpses at what life could look like reminded her she knows better, she is better, and she feels like she's meeting herself again. And what she sees in her potential is pretty great.

Spreading her lips into an unexpected grin, Mary exhales and flips on the light. She turns her head to smile at her reflection, which stares back at her with two wide-open eyes even though her one eyelid is now swollen shut. She watches her reflected self clutch at her face and chest, then fall to her knees at the toilet and vomit.

But Mary on this side of the glass feels fine. Stands tall. Closing the bathroom door for privacy, she steps closer to the mirror and waits patiently.

REFLECTION

Mary gives one last good spit into the toilet water before breathing deeply and bracing to look back at the mirror. Willing her knees to support her legs again, she scrapes her feet against the tile to curl into a squat and then rises to standing. She wipes residual saliva from the corner of her mouth and stares herself down once again.

Maybe if on her way home from the doctor's office she'd stumbled and face-planted on asphalt, right into a muddy puddle, maybe then she'd understand or remotely believe what she's seeing. But when she touches her face and runs her fingers through her hair, what she feels doesn't sync with the visual. She widens both of her eyes and alternates closing and opening each one. She watches her distorted reflection shift side to side as she views it from each perspective and confirms that, yes, both her eyes are open while her reflection only peers through one.

Stepping closer to the bloody Mary in the mirror, this Mary hesitantly reaches out her right hand and asks, "Are you all right?"

REFRACTION

With held breath, Mary stares at the hand extended toward her, its fingertips flattened against the glass. She releases air from her lungs.

"I am now."

She swallows and slowly raises her left hand to the mirror until the pain stops her. Her shoulder is sore from when Jack shoved her into the wall so hard her head ricocheted off it, too, and her face throbs like one big artery. Still, she holds her arm up half-mast, willing to lift it the rest of the way.

Her unscathed reflection looks her up and down in stunned silence. Just as Mary is about to reach its hand, it draws it away a few inches. But despite the recoil, something seems to register behind the other Mary's expression. Her eyes now hold a knowing look, though her voice is tentative when she ventures, "Fool me once, shame on...him?"

Licking the corner of her split lip, Mary nods. "And fool me twice…"

Her reflection further retracts her outstretched hand, bringing it to her mouth. "Shame on _us_."

"Not you," Mary says softly. "Just me."

The other Mary flattens her hand to her breastbone and shakes her head. "It could have been me. So easily."

"But it wasn't."

"But it was." She sucks in a breath, and in the tremor of her lips, Mary reads the thoughts that go unsaid: _If I'd accepted that drink, taken that train_…

Mary shrugs and winces at the recurring ache in her shoulder. _But you didn't_.

Her mirrored self bites her lower lip. She appears to draw in a number of shallow breaths. "I suppose no matter what…we survived. Somehow." Her eyes pan down from Mary's bloody face to her torso. "Still. I'm so sorry."

Digging her chin into her chest, Mary looks down as well and spies—with her good eye—the large brown stain soaked into her T-shirt.

"It's okay," she says as she tugs the wet cotton away from her skin. "It was only coffee."

It's a lame inside joke. They both know it.

Yet Mary and Mary look up at each other and can't help but crack a smile. With opposite hands, they reach for the mirror and touch palms. Leaning into the contact, they hold each other up.


End file.
